Polk Gains Neighborly State Senator

Sunday

Feb 10, 2013 at 12:04 AM

When Florida lawmakers responded to their once-a-decade requirement last year to redraw district boundaries for seats in the state Senate, and the state and U.S. Houses of Representatives, they scrambled the legislative landscape, particularly in Polk County.

By Glenn Marston

BARTOW | When Florida lawmakers responded to their once-a-decade requirement last year to redraw district boundaries for seats in the state Senate, and the state and U.S. Houses of Representatives, they scrambled the legislative landscape, particularly in Polk County.

As a result, District 14 of the state Senate now covers Haines City and Poinciana, is centered in Osceola County's Kissimmee and reaches up into Orlando in Orange County.

Newly seated as senator for District 14 is Darren Soto, a Democrat and lawyer from Orlando. Soto, 34, won his November election with a 75.2 percent majority.

He is a former state representative, having won a special election in 2007, and re-election in 2008 and 2010.

Soto appeared in Bartow on Jan. 28 at a meeting of the Tiger Bay Club of Polk County to address and answer questions from the political-and- civic group.

Fitting in with legislators who have represented Polk County since before the 2012 reapportionment should be no problem, Soto said, because he has served with them as state representative from a neighboring district.

"I worked with both parties, including many folks from your delegation." He named state Reps. Seth McKeel, R-Lakeland, and John Wood, R-Haines City, and state Sen. Kelly Stargel, R-Lakeland.

Soto listed several priorities for the annual 60-day legislative session, which starts March 5:

■ Employment. "Jobs are still first and foremost, as far as what we need to be looking at," Soto said.

■ Citrus greening. "We need to get an $8 million appropriation to make sure that we can have enough research money to study greening," he said. "It is decimating our orange groves right now."

■ Tourism. "Another issue that definitely means jobs in this area is keeping our Visit Florida tourism-marketing dollars up," Soto said. "I was pleased to see that we have now Legoland here in Polk County, so you all get a much bigger share of tourism coming through here. Particularly representing the east part of the county, even though it's not in the district, a lot of my folks work there."

■ Education. "We have to look at education funding," he said. "We do see the governor getting on board with raising teacher salaries. That's certainly an admirable start to it. In addition, the universities have asked for $118 million ... to make sure that we don't have to increase tuition."

Soto said his general approach is to take up issues that benefit the majority within his district. Given that the majority is outside Polk County, that could be a conflict. However, his comments in Bartow indicated an interest in serving Polk well.